North Lawndale Employment Network site is open
BY TIA CAROL JONES
North Lawndale Employment Network (NLEN) opened its location at 1111 S. Homan on Thursday, Aug. 26.
North Lawndale Employment Network was founded in 1999 with the mission to provide resources and meet the employment needs of the community. The 20,000 square foot site brings all five NLEN
locations into a central location, with a community hub, a café, a program and service center, garden space, community center and apiary for its Beelove, LLC.
Brenda Palms Barber, President and CEO of NLEN, has been with the organization since its beginning. In 2004, she launched Sweet Beginnings, a subsidiary that manages apiaries and provides employment to returning citizens.
For Palms Barber, the need for NLEN to create a campus in North Lawndale was because the unemployment rate continues to be three- to four times higher than the entire city of Chicago. There was a need to see population level impact and the needle move so that North Lawndale is no longer a community that has a high unemployment rate. NLEN, in partnership with the North Lawndale Community Coordinating Council, aimed to reduce the North Lawndale unemployment rate by 10 percent by 2025.
“We were in four to five different locations and didn’t have the capacity to even really serve 2,200 people a year. So, if we’re going to have this big, hairy, audacious goal, and make it real, we knew we needed to have a great place for people to come to learn, to access skills and earn certifications that would help them move from low
level jobs to middle wage incomes,” she said.
Palms Barber said those jobs would treat people with respect, where there are opportunities for advancement and receive benefits. So, NLEN purchased the Community Bank of North Lawndale two years ago and transformed it into a workforce development campus. It took a little more than $11 million for the transformation.
At the campus there is a capacity to serve up to 5,000 job seekers annually. Palms Barber said with that, the unemployment rate of 15.9% will be 5.9%, which is NLEN’s goal. The campus also
makes the organizations more visible, which brings awareness and makes sure it is not North Lawndale’s best kept secret.
NLEN is pushing for local jobs for local residents. Employers who want to relocate to North Lawndale have to be willing and committed to hiring within the community. NLEN wants to be a source for those employers to get employees. Palms Barber wants to make sure the jobs those companies have are worthy and are good jobs. The employers Palms Barber has engaged with, new and old, are very receptive to hiring from the community. There have been 6-10 new employers that have hiring agreements with NLEN. Those include Ja’ Grill and Matanky Realty.
“It’s absolutely fantastic to see that people are really committed and we’re holding them accountable to hiring locally,” Palms Barber said.
Another thing NLEN is doing is making sure job seekers are prepared to apply for employment virtually, either with a LinkedIn profile or other sites. It is the organization’s way of helping the community through the challenges around digital education.
It has been a long time coming for NLEN to transform the bank into the campus.
“To be able to say to the community of North Lawndale and the greater West side, we’re here for you, we understand there
are challenges you may have encountered around unemployment but it doesn’t matter, we’re going to pour everything we have into helping you help yourself and to place you with employers,” she said.
For more information about the North Lawndale Employment Network, visit www.nlen.org.
